In Galloway, You Can Drive North and South at the Same Time

If you drive out past Stockton University by the Garden State Parkway, you might notice something a little peculiar -- for a brief stretch of road, you are going north and south at the same time.

As you probably know, they recently redesigned Exit 44 on the Garden State Parkway to make getting to and from Stockton University and Smithville a lot easier. And if you drive on Pomona Road over the Parkway, you'll see some signs that indicate you are going north and south (or south and north) at the same time. How is that possible?

For starters, let's introduce a highway term: concurrency. A concurrency is when one road has multiple route numbers. For example, the Black Horse Pike through a good chunk of Atlantic County is both US Route 40 and US Route 322 -- that's a concurrency.

Anyway, back to breaking the laws of physics... let's assume you are leaving Stockton and going to Smithville. You're driving on Pomona Road (Northbound County Route 575) towards the Parkway. On your left, Moss Mill Road enters the picture, which is County Alt Route 561. Moss Mill Road traffic that is heading towards the Parkway is going southbound. Since both roads -- Northbound Route 575 and Southbound Alt Route 561 both use the same overpass (a concurrency), you are technically going north and south at the same time.

Confused yet? Here's a map. The green line in southbound Alt 561, the red line is northbound 575.

County Routes 575 and 561 Spur - Google Maps

There's actually a term for this: it's a wrong way concurrency (one road with multiple route numbers that run in opposite directions) -- and they're pretty rare. And now you can impress your friends the next time you drive across Parkway Exit 44 (assuming you can remember my really long-winded explanation).